


Ivy Winter

by EriksChampion



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Slice of Life, leaning manga canon, platonic/pre-slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28424223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EriksChampion/pseuds/EriksChampion
Summary: Pegasus defeated, Shizuka saved, and Mokuba, Sugoroku, and Seto set free--life can now go back to normal. But everywhere Yugi goes, the shadows of Duelist Kingdom linger. Even--especially--in Kaiba's face. It's true that some moves can never be unmade. But that doesn't mean you quit playing.
Relationships: Kaiba Seto/Mutou Yuugi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Ivy Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rainstormcolors](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormcolors/gifts).



1

The first time Yugi stopped by the Kaiba manor to give Kaiba his homework, Isono intercepted him at the front door.

Yugi bowed, a little awkwardly, and asked where Kaiba was. He had a week’s worth of notes for the classes they shared—math, science, history, and literature—delivered at the explicit request of the school principal, each topic assigned its own crayon-color plastic folder, plus a list of their homework assignments and a schedule of upcoming exams and sign-ups for the class festival and--

“Apologies, Yugi-sama,” he said. “Seto-sama has requested that you leave his assignments with me.”

“Oh.”

The interior of the mansion was large, painted a white so cold it looked blue. From where Yugi stood, heels on the threshold, Isono blocked all but the edges of the foyer, the towering ceiling, the darkened corners of the stairs and side doors. Yugi tilted his head, just a touch, and caught a glimpse of a thin pillar of light and shadow at the top of the stairs. Isono stepped in front of him, and the figure disappeared. He gestured for the folders.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Yugi fumbled his way through his departure. He asked Isono to tell Kaiba hi for him and immediately regretted it when he saw Isono’s blank expression. He slipped out the door and felt that he might melt when his face hit the sunlight.

2

Yugi came back a week later with four new folders and again met Isono in the foyer.

Isono cleared his throat.

“Yugi-sama, Seto-sama asks that I convey his gratitude for your service, and has requested that I pass on the following message,” Isono extracted a crisply folded piece of paper from his breast pocket and squinted at it for a long moment before continuing. “First, please note that Japan’s first permanent capital was Nara, not Nagasaki. Second, the major outcome of the Genpei War was the downfall of the Taira clan and establishment of the Kamakura shogunate under Minamoto no Yoritomo. Third, your analysis of The Temple of the Golden Pavilion was trite, superficial, and--” Isono readjusted the paper, as if hoping that it might say something slightly different in another light. “—intellectually lazy, betraying a profound lack of interest and understanding of not only the post-war Japanese psyche, but the essence of the human condition more generally. As for your work in math and science—I couldn’t bring myself to read more than a single page. Your attempts at integration by parts are so profoundly misguided that they immediately triggered a migraine that lasted the rest of the afternoon. If you insist on producing and delivering garbage, I would prefer that you not return.” 

Isono refolded the note, tucked it back into his pocket, and fixed Yugi with another perfectly professional, expressionless stare.

Yugi slipped out the door and down the walk, and the icy breath of the Kaiba manor did not fade until he was well out of its shadow. The ghostly shadow of the memory—the figure he had seen on the stairs—lingered. He could have sworn that someone had been watching him.

3

Yugi did not dwell on these brief encounters. The memories did not hang over him. Not like when night was falling and the warm reflection of his desk lamp light floated over the quiet, darkened city. Not like when he flicked off the television and the screen still glowed an electric grayish-white, just for a moment, just long enough for Yugi to touch it with his fingertip and feel the jitter and the spark. Yugi’s mind didn’t slide into these half-places, partway between silence and noise, matter, energy—and light. The twists and turns and corners of the mansion. If he started paying extra special attention in history, that was all coincidence, and it meant nothing. 

Yugi kept coming back, and Isono continued to be tall, serious, and to give away nothing. Yugi continued to feel a presence around him—high, dark, and untouchable.

Until--

“Isono,” Kaiba’s voice echoed across the foyer. “Send him upstairs.”

Isono stepped aside. Kaiba was sitting at the top of the stairs. A clean white light fell upon his face, like light flashing off a blade, and his blue eyes glowed every watery sky-ocean shade from sun-ray blinding white to Mariana Trench. 

“He stays outside.” Kaiba pointed to Yugi’s chest. “Isono--”

Isono opened a big lead-lined box and offered it to Yugi as if he were serving desserts at a dinner party.

Yugi reached for the puzzle on reflex. His gaze remained fixed on Kaiba’s face. “Sorry, other me,” he whispered, slipping the puzzle over his head. “We’ll talk later.” 

Kaiba’s eyes remained on him as Yugi climbed the stairs. He had a clear, unflinching gaze that Yugi tried to but could not match. But even under his sharp chin and fisted hands and hard frown, Kaiba looked so small in his tall silver chair. One blink away from vanishing. 

Kaiba spun and began to roll away from him, down the hall.

“This way.”

Yugi followed Kaiba down a shadowed turn and then into a room flooded with light. Yugi thought it was a greenhouse—with potted ferns set atop shiny golden pedestals and at the center of every table. The air, warmer and lighter than in the foyer, washed over him and felt like gold relief. And the light—the windows—arching up towards the ceiling. The world beyond the glass swirled with vines, with their hand-sized green leaves that pressed right up against the window, as if they were looking in and watching them, with their heavy white flowers, with their plump purple buds, with their big beds and verandas and living rooms for the fat fuzzy bees and buzzed and bonked against the glass, all swimming in a heavy golden mist of pollen and dust, all endlessly layered atop and tangled up and in and within each other. Like a city. Or a sea. The library windows were like a porthole to wave after wave of a shining green and golden world. Close enough to reflect soft and golden against the cool planes of Kaiba’s face. Impossible to touch.

Kaiba wheeled to the table at the center of the room, where he straightened each pile of Yugi’s color-coded folders and slid them back towards him.

“I thought I would do better to tell you in person, since Isono’s message didn’t seem to stick. You don’t need to keep coming back here.”

“I don’t mind, Kaiba-kun, really.”

“But I do. It might be different if you were Mazaki or something, someone who actually pays attention. But, Yugi, your work is--” he closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “It’s—anti-educational. I could literally feel my brain cells resigning in protest.”

Yugi laughed, a little awkwardly. Kaiba’s expression was unmovable.

“I guess, I do have some trouble paying attention in class sometimes.” Yugi’s attention drifted to the window. He could feel Kaiba’s eyes on him. “Other me has questions sometimes, or other things he wants to talk about.”

Kaiba scoffed at that. The sound settled uneasily over the room.

“He’s curious about the world. And people.” He looked back at Kaiba, whose eyes looked startlingly blue. “We both are.”

Kaiba almost rolled his eyes, but turned back to the desk, and the folders. He tidied them again. “At least they didn’t send Jounouchi.”

4

The weeks dribbled on. There was a date set for Shizuka’s eye operation; Jounouchi announced it with a grin during lunch, then flashed Yugi a thumb’s-up when no one else was looking. The next morning, Yugi found a box of chocolates and can of cherry coke at the bottom of his locker. Kaiba’s desk remained empty.

Kaiba and Yugi continued to meet in the library. Kaiba continued to grumble about Yugi’s poor handwriting and his shaky grasp on acid-base chemistry, but the comments were filtered through warm library light. Yugi continued to leave the puzzle at the door. 

“Look, it goes like this: you have to look for the carboxylic acid group—see the oxygen double-bonded to the carbon, you need…” Kaiba trailed off, rubbing his eyes with the balls of his hands. When he pulled his hands away his face looked sunken and thin. There were dark shadows around his eyes.

“Do you want to take a break, Kaiba-kun?”

“No…” Kaiba shook his head. “I just need--” he reached for a thermos at the side of the table, took a big gulp, and grimaced.

“What is that?”

Kaiba made a vague gesture. “It’s...nutritional supplement. High calorie, high protein, high fat—high in everything but taste, apparently.” He set the thermos back down and gave it a dismissive little shove.

“Why do you need something like that?”

“Because I’m in such fucking fabulous physical condition, obviously.” Kaiba sneered but that sound, too, was filtered and felt as if it came from someplace very far away. Like a sliver of cold beach. With a low gray sky, ashy sand, and pebble-sized waves that lapped at the land and slipped away again with little more than a whisper. 

“But I shouldn’t complain,” Kaiba continued. “When’s the next time I’m going to have the opportunity to take a 36-hour nap? Immediately preceded by a six-month nap? Honestly, this is the most well-rested I’ve ever been. I’ve never felt better.” Kaiba sounded like he wanted to sound angry—he was reaching for the anger but the anger wasn’t there. What did he find instead? A windswept, empty beach.

5

Early evening, at the game shop. When the sunlight was just starting to fade and the Saturday shoppers were more echoes and shadows than crowds. People walked by but they didn’t come in; their distant voices and the traffic hum drifted through the open door. Yugi lost count of the change in his hands when he heard his grandfather coughing at the front of the store. 

He was nearly doubled over, hacking hard and thumping himself on the back.

“Are you alright? Do you need anything?”

Yugi was at his side before Sugoroku could reply. He tried to laugh and wave Yugi off. But Yugi’s eyes were fixed on Sugoroku’s hand, rubbing and patting a small circle on his chest. 

Yugi swallowed a jolt. His eyes were large and dark, iridescent red like an insect wing and looking very serious—a look he had been wearing more and more lately. A midnight-blue feeling he was still wading into, and letting pass, slowly, like a ripple across his skin. He wanted to fight someone. He was afraid.

Sugoroku squeezed Yugi’s shoulder. 

“Actually, Yugi, could you make me some tea? I think that’s just the thing I need.”

Yugi’s eyes snapped back to his face, and his expression resolved into something a little softer and more familiar. “Of course,” he said. His voice still had a fine edge. He stalked to the kitchen cautiously, casting several glances over his shoulder.

In the kitchen, under a circle of light just big enough for two. Yugi sat with elbows propped on the kitchen table, looking up from his own steaming mug as Sugoroku eased himself into his chair. 

He grinned at Yugi--a little too broadly to be anything other than a cover for a grimace and a flinch--and held the tea up to his face. He took several deep breaths as he waited for it to cool.

Yugi studied his face. Had his wrinkles always been so deep? His shoulders so slumped? He kept a stool behind the cash register, now. 

Sugoroku caught him staring. 

“Does it still hurt?”

Sugoroku scoffed. “What, my all losing hands in daifugo this morning? Sure I was embarrassed at the time, but what can you do? Throw the cards back in the pile and hope for a better hand next time!” His smile fell as he caught Yugi’s eye. Yugi’s face was drawn, his eyes gleaming dark—like a lake.

“You know what really hurts, Yugi? Knowing that I’ll never get to get a good look at that Pegasus bastard’s face after you—you!” He pinched Yugi’s cheek. “Gave him the walloping of his life! A sight like that would be worth a thousand wins in daifugo.”

Yugi let him sip his tea. 

“What did it feel like?” Yugi stared very hard at Sugoroku’s hands, the way they hugged his mug. “To be--”

“Like nothing, Yugi.” Sugoroku took his hand and turned it over, palm up, to the light. Yugi’s hand looked so tender and pink, like a petal. Their hands didn’t fit together anymore, not the way that Yugi remembered. “I missed you. That’s all.” 

Night had now fallen completely. The view out the kitchen window was a solid black wall. The kitchen was a single cell of light. Sugoroku squeezed his hand. 

“I was lonely.”

The next day, Yugi brought Kaiba something new.

Kaiba wrinkled his nose as Yugi laid the spread out on the table: two double cheeseburgers, two orders of curly fries, and two milkshakes—chocolate and strawberry, so that Kaiba-kun could choose.

“I can’t eat this,” Kaiba sniffed, shuffling his schoolwork to the side. “And it’s going to make a mess.”

Yugi scooped up one of the cheeseburgers. “But are you sure, though? This has everything you need—super fat, super protein—and it tastes much better.”

Kaiba regarded him suspiciously. 

“You’ll never be hungry again.”

Kaiba snorted.

“I promise!”

Kaiba neatly crossed his arms and turned his face away. “Actually, I’m a vegetarian.”

Yugi’s mouth fell open as he scrambled for something to say—a dozen profuse apologies—but came back with nothing until he caught the faint glint in Kaiba’s eyes.

“You dirty liar!”

“A victimless crime.”

“No—me! I’m the victim!” Yugi thrust out his chin. “I paid for these.”

Kaiba wasn’t moved. “And it’s going in the trash either way.”

They worked in near silence, save the faint scratch of Yugi’s writing, Kaiba turning the pages of his notes. A bee buzzing at the window.

“Yugi, what is this?”

Kaiba held open Yugi’s math notebook. The notes on integration began tidy and legible, but progressed into an intricate web of dots, tic tac toe, hangman (ASKEW, JAWBREAKER, TRUMPETER SWAN, BUMBLE BEE). A haphazard attempt at pictionary, where someone had attempted to illustrate the phrase “to change your point of view,” with the point getting larger and darker each time. The games ran into and over each other, were crossed out, erased, and scribbled over again and again until the entire page was smudged and gray. 

“Oh, we must have gotten bored.”

Kaiba raised a brow.

“Other me and I play games sometimes during class. When it gets boring.”

Kaiba still looked puzzled. As if a slant of the foyer’s blue-white light had fallen upon his face--he looked distant, and cooler.

“I do the right hand and I let him do the left, so we can’t see what the other person is thinking. We didn’t realize we could split like that until our duel with Pegasus, but--”

Kaiba flipped the notebook shut and shoved it back towards Yugi. “I don’t care.”

“—it’s fun.” Yugi finished weakly. 

Kaiba’s face was still stormy.

“I think it helps him, a little,” Yugi said softly. “For him to come out for a bit when things are—normal. He usually only sees the worst in people. And it’s nice for me, too, having someone to talk to.” Kaiba continued to say nothing. “You could play against him sometime, if you want. He claims he wouldn’t even need a whole hand to beat you in anything.”

The corner of Kaiba’s mouth inched fractionally upward. The was a red heart at the center of his blue, blue eyes. “He told you that just now?”

“Oh no, we can’t speak now. He said it before—that all it would take--” he thrust his pinky out. “Is one little finger!”

“Hm, so you two spend a lot of time talking about me, huh?”

Yugi smiled. “Only trash talk, I promise.”

“Better be.”

6

“So, how does this work?” Kaiba’s eyes flickered from Yugi’s face, then down, to his right hand, and the left. 

Yugi stretched his hands out across the table, so that Kaiba could inspect them side-by-side. The Millennium Puzzle hung around his neck.

Yugi giggled at Kaiba’s studious expression. “Did you think one of us would have a manicure or something?” The question came out as less of a jab than he had intended. Somewhere between his brain, his mouth, and Kaiba’s intense gaze, the thought turned rosy and soft. He coughed a little, and when Kaiba poked the back of his left hand his vision went rose completely.

“Do you feel that?”

“N-no.” Yugi shook his head.

Kaiba dug his fingernail into Yugi’s hand until his fingertip turned white. “And now? You don’t feel anything at all?”

“I—uh--” Kaiba looked up at him. “I don’t think so.”

Kaiba snatched Yugi’s hand off the table and spoke directly to his palm. “Can I trust you?”

“No!” Yugi laughed and pulled his hand away. “He’s a trickster and a cheat. Give him a hand and I can’t even get within twenty feet of a lighter.” He chuckled. “He says he doesn’t cheat, he just knows better than to accept rules at face value. Technicality. But don’t worry, I’ll kick him out if he tries anything.”

Kaiba grunted, setting Yugi’s hand back down but not letting it out of his sight. He looked at it like he was staring at a spider crawling towards him on the wall. “Thank you. So...just one finger, huh?”

Yugi leaned back and watched them set up the game. They turned through pages of Yugi’s literature notebook. Yugi let his eyes slide half-closed, losing himself to the warm afternoon sun, Kaiba’s small huffs of frustration, and the cautious, delicate way he dipped his french fries into his chocolate shake between moves. Kaiba’s eyes occasionally darted to Yugi’s face, to confirm that he wasn’t being had. He didn’t seem satisfied until Yugi’s eyes slipped shut completely and his face turned away, but his hand continued writing in intelligent, big block letters.

“This is so fucked.”

Yugi laughed. “You get used to it.”

“Do you?” Kaiba paused. “Can he hear me?”

“A little bit, if I let him.”

“Hm…” Kaiba looked down at Yugi’s hand. “Prove to me that you’re not Yugi.”

“But how?”

“Tell me, tell me something that only you know, and something Yugi doesn’t want me to know.”

“Hey!” Yugi tried to snatch his hand back. But Kaiba held him firmly around the wrist. He thrust up a hand.

“No peaking.”

Yugi squirmed in his seat as he saw his forearm twitch, but could not see and could not feel his hand tracing out the letters. Kaiba’s eyes were fixed on the page. Then he flipped the notebook over, and the two of them continued playing.

Yugi flipped through the notebook when he got home that evening. Alone, in his room, with his lamp casting soft pink light and plum shadows up and down the walls. They played more neatly and he and Yugi did, each game laid out in a little grid. Which made the writing stand out all the more—big, bold, conquering the page like light breaching the horizon at sunrise.

ONE: I AM SORRY

TWO: HE LIKES YOU VERY MUCH

7

The pace of the days picked up. Exams, book reports, school festivals, and detentions floated past and piled up in memory like the dry autumn leaves that blanketed the school grounds and sidewalk. In the shuffle, Anzu picked up the next shift of homework delivery, and then the one after that. She had nothing of note to report back. Ryou took a turn, as well. Jounouchi steadfastly refused.

The next time Yugi visited Kaiba manor, fall had been eaten by winter, and Isono directed him to the back garden. 

Kaiba was sitting at a far bench, ensconced in a world of lush whiteness. 

Kaiba gave no indication of seeing Yugi until he was sitting beside him, but Yugi observed Kaiba carefully—the sweat shimmering on his forehead, despite the cold. His face was fuller, eyes clearer, than the last time Yugi had seen him. He sat a little straighter, as if he was no longer fighting against himself to remain upright. A pair of forearm crutches rested against the back of the bench.

“How did you get out here?”

“I walked,” Kaiba sad, somewhat defensively. “I wanted to walk.”

“Oh.” Yugi looked at the ground, at the trees, at the house, so silent that he could hear the snow fall. He could see the library window from where they sat. From the outside, the window looked black; the bed and the river of soft green vines were gilded and glittery with snow. But underneath the snow they still glowed a rich reddish-green, bright enough to make Yugi think that these soft vines were the world’s supple veins.

“I don’t understand.”

It sounded like Kaiba was speaking to the sky, to the cold dark places between tree branches that not even the snow could touch. Yugi thought of that beach again. It sounded like rain was falling upon the water.

“What happened there?” Kaiba continued. “I couldn’t beat him—I couldn’t beat either of them. And I tried everything. I cheated. I tried playing fair, when Pegasus did everything he could to cheat me. I—I was two steps away from—from losing everything. And he would have let me. Egged me on to do it. And that—that made me want to--” He stuttered, thoughts scattered as the falling snow. “I didn’t understand it at the time. I thought that you’d just chickened out. A weakness, to not see things through all the way to the end. But no, you—stopped him? Got him to change his mind? And then—against Pegasus—you worked together—and won? I--”

“What is it, Kaiba-kun?”

“I don’t understand you. How you—you live with a literal demon in your head, and you made friends with it?”

“It’s—well it’s like I said before, you get used to it.”

Kaiba stared at him. “Not necessarily.”

Yugi’s hands twisted together. He blinked, and saw a rainbow sparkle dancing on the snow. The snow-enveloped world looked soft enough to kiss.

“I think I owe you an apology. And this.” Kaiba said. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two small red boxes. He pressed one into Yugi’s hands. “First, for the both of you—for saving Mokuba. And,” He delicately placed the second box on top of the first. “For you alone. For saving my life.” 

8

The last time Yugi stopped by the Kaiba manor to give Kaiba his homework, he couldn’t find him anywhere. Yugi wandered through the empty library and peaked out the window at the empty garden. He turned down a few quiet and darkened halls, letting himself get a little lost in the mystery of their many twists and turns. It felt like he was drifting just above the earth, somewhere secret, and—if not sacred—similarly heavy with a long, untold story.

Yugi found him at the end of the final hall, sitting in a ring of copper light, in big leather chair behind a glossy wooden desk. He looked up as Yugi entered.

“I brought another set of notes from literature. We started reading Dandelions this week.”

Kaiba stared at him. His face was perfectly expressionless. “I don’t need it.”

“Well sure, I mean we only did just start reading it--”

“I’m not coming back to school, Yugi. I withdrew.” Kaiba sighed. “There are multiple opportunities for distance learning these days, and now that I am able to return to work, it’s much more practical to enroll in a program that accommodates my schedule.”

Yugi shut the door on his thoughts before Kaiba or anyone else had the chance to see them. “Oh, yeah. I mean--of course! That totally makes sense! It’s great that you have that option available. I—uh,” Yugi reached for his folder. “I guess I had better go, then.”

Yugi turned to leave. He was half-way across the room when Kaiba spoke again.

“Yugi.”

Yugi turned.

“I withdrew six weeks ago.”


End file.
